


A Tale of Two Universes

by Paycheckgurl



Category: Torchwood
Genre: (but I use that tag for angst this time), (sort of), Alternate Universe, Angst, Audio references, Character Study, Depression, F/M, Fix-It, Ianto’s goth phase, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Loneliness, M/M, Major Character Undeath, Mentions of Alcohol Abuse, Post-Canon Fix-It, Season/Series 05, Slight audio spoilers, Torchwood blind summit, Torchwood broken, post aliens among us, prompt: connections, prompt: healing, year that never was fest, you don’t need to have listened to audios referenced to follow along
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28222437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paycheckgurl/pseuds/Paycheckgurl
Summary: In one universe Ianto Jones lives and in another he dies. Only it’s not quite that simple.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper & Ianto Jones, Ianto Jones & Team Torchwood, Ianto Jones & Toshiko Sato, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Lisa Hallett/Ianto Jones, Owen Harper & Ianto Jones, Yvonne Hartman & Ianto Jones
Comments: 14
Kudos: 42
Collections: Torchwood Fan Fests: The Year That Never Was Fest





	A Tale of Two Universes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Year That Never Was Fest. 
> 
> This story references Torchwood One: Blind Summit, Torchwood One: New Girl, and Torchwood Series 5: Aliens Among Us, Torchwood: Broken, and The Last Beacon but you don’t need to have to listened to those audios to follow along. There are some slight spoilers for them though.

Early in life Ianto Jones believed he had never been anything fantastic. He was bright, but not a genius, and the systemic failures of the education offered to council kids had led him to juvenile delinquency rather than university. His father had always been a bit much, and always had things to criticize. He was too soft, didn’t dress sharply enough, or dressed sharply but in the wrong way. He was interested in the wrong types of work, he had the wrong friends, and said the wrong things. 

By the time he was in his teens, Ianto had stopped trying to appease his father almost entirely, and embraced alternate and gothic styles. He went against the grain outwardly and inwardly. He still had the wrong friends, but at least that was by choice.

Ianto’s father got drunker and drunker. And it got a bit harder to write off incidents like Ianto getting pushed off the swing too hard as accidents. 

In one universe, Ianto would go to London to find his father who’d run off, and begin working as a barista. He’d happen to meet one Yvonne Hartman who’d drug him with retcon over and over, as an attempt to use him as her unlicensed and non consenting therapist. 

In another he’d simply applied for an admin job. 

In both universes, Ianto Jones would end up working for Torchwood. 

* * *

In one universe Ianto would get quite good at making coffee. It came from being a barista, but maybe also some suggestions from Yvonne when she retconned him the final time before he took up employment for her. Ianto would never know this, and assumed he’d always been good with coffee. It became part of his personality and a trademark hobby. Ianto Jones who made the best coffee in the universe. 

In another universe he’d made subpar tea that his office mates simply tolerated out of enforced British politeness. He never put the right amount of cream, and when he added sugar it was never stirred correctly. They’d never pushed him to try coffee instead, because everyone had simply assumed he’d be bad at it too. They may have even been right. 

In one universe Ianto would use coffee making as a way of calming his nerves. Watching the beans go through the machine was a way of finding peace after a long day. 

In another, he simply plugged away at Excel until eyes strained, and he had to blink away the pain. His nerves fry him and he feels the grayness cubicle walls mocking him, but without a simple coping mechanism, he lets the anxiety eat at him day after day. 

In one universe he’d offer a coffee to Lisa from acquisitions, and he’d gain the confidence to ask her out. The date wouldn’t go well, but he’d get a second chance sometime later (after the disaster that was his terrible relationship with Racheal Allan in the between). And they’d fall in love. 

In another Lisa would taste the terrible tea with a grimace, and politely ignore the awkward, younger man that had offered it to her. They never exchanged more than a few words after, even if the entire office suspected he was pining. 

* * *

In one universe Ianto Jones was the Personal Assistant to Yvonne Hartman. He was there by her side through the thick of it all. Yvonne was not a good person, but Ianto Jones was. And he did everything in his power to act her personal Jiminy Cricket. And despite everything he trusted her and pledged his loyalty (that was also do in part to the suggestions placed within his mind along with the high doses of retcon in his system, but Ianto wouldn’t know that). 

In another Ianto would offer Yvonne a terrible tea, and she’d not spare him two thoughts. At most maybe she’d remember his name if her memory was jogged enough. 

* * *

In one universe Ianto Jones would see everything he loved burn around him. He’d see death and metal and fear and destruction. But he’d find her. He’d find Lisa. And he’d vow to save her through any means necessary.

In another universe Torchwood doesn’t fall. But Lisa does: for Xavier from IT. They’re married just six months after dating. Ianto would watch longingly but without the ability to do anything about it. Two years later she’d come into the office announcing she was expecting her first child. Four years later she’d find herself in a traffic accident so bad the news would cover it. They’d put a censor bar over the blood splatters that stained the bent metal that had once been the roof of the car. Her husband would have the choice of taking her life support. And he would. 

* * *

In one universe Ianto Jones finds Captain Jack Harkness. At first he’s just a boss, a boss he might have flirted with for Lisa’s sake and nothing more. 

And then he’s someone that he hates. Someone who is dark and evil and the reason he lost Lisa for good this time. He might laugh and flirt and be frustratingly attractive, but he’s the reason he considers it, for even a moment, when Mandy the Bartender suggests that he run away and not come back. Even knowing what he suspects Mandy of, that she had a hand in some disappearances: he considers it. Because Jack is the worst kind of evil, he’s the evil that can hide it under a smile and a laugh. 

But then he’s his salvation. The friend that is there for him when everything is broken and breaking and painful and hallowed out in ways he can’t describe. That he’s someone that just like Ianto, puts on a mask to hide his pain from the world. Someone Ianto is attracted to. Someone Ianto wants to take his pain away, if only for one night. 

Someone that Ianto is just sleeping with. And that’s all it is, even if it’s been going on longer than they said it would.  


But he’s someone he cares so deeply about he can’t put it into worlds. Someone that makes him feel needed and wanted, and that he can share his pain with. Someone he can heal with. 

He’s someone that Ianto knows needs him just as much, if not more, than Ianto needs him. 

He’s someone that came back for him. 

He’s his boyfriend. 

He’s someone he loves. 

He loves him more than anything.   


In another universe, Ianto doesn’t find Captain Jack Harkness. In another universe Jack Harkness is somewhere else in time and space, and maybe never grew out of conning people for personal gain. 

Instead Ianto dates around. Mostly women. Sometimes men. He doesn’t like labels but he supposes “bisexual” works if anyone asks. 

He ends up with a girl named Racheal Allan who he likes enough to ask her hand. And then a year into the marriage he walks in on her in the middle of kissing a stranger in their living room. 

He signed the divorce papers that night. His pay at Torchwood is more than generous, but somehow even with the money, he chose the worse lawyer of the two. He comes out of the marriage with less assets than he came into it with. 

He doesn’t feel the world is broken and the light is gone. He simply never believed there was good in the world to begin with. 

So he becomes cynical and closed off. His usual dry wit gets drier. He dates around more and more but no longer has any illusions about them leading anywhere. His coworkers describe him as miserable. And they’re right.

* * *

In one universe Ianto Jones has friends. It takes a while. For Toshiko to understand him. For him to understand Owen. And for Gwen to notice him. But when it all clicks into place he’d do anything for them. Anything to tease Owen in one of their verbal sparring matches that maybe looked hostile to outsiders, but was affectionate to them. To debate and talk with Toshiko. To be in one of the cuddles Gwen insists on, and have a very Welsh argument about the small things in life. 

Losing Owen and Tosh at the same time is like having needles pinned through his chest. It’s a pain he never wanted to experience again. But he wouldn’t trade their friendship, while he had it, for anything. 

And he still has Gwen. Wonderful, amazing Gwen, who spills her heart out and cares so much. Gwen who’s fierce and will fight for the ones she loves. Not a very exclusive club as Gwen loves everyone she meets. But still Ianto is honored when he’s among its ranks. 

In another universe Ianto Jones never meets Owen Harper, who works at Royal Hope and has had a drinking problem since losing his fiancé far too young. Nor does he meet Toshiko Sato, one of the most brilliant minds in the world, who happened to be a prisoner no one was planning on releasing. Nor Gwen Cooper, a police officer who is seemingly happy in her normal life, but who feels something is missing from it and doesn’t believe in her own worth — but cannot ever put her finger on why she struggles with these feelings so strongly. 

Instead he has office mates that regard him as the guy from admin. That’s him. Ianto from admin. Sometimes they invite him to the pub. Most of the time they don’t. And he’s so incredibly lonely. But that he supposed was his burden to bear. 

After Racheal they don’t regard him at all.   
  


He didn’t think it was possible to be any lonelier.

* * *

In one universe Ianto loves his job. Like with his friendships, it takes a while. To be more than just the butler. More than the “tea boy”. But he loves playing archivist and cataloging the collection of wonderful and strange things he finds along the way. He loves the adrenaline rush field work gives him (and he’ll admit, it plays a bit upon his James Bond fantasies). He loves the satisfaction that comes from finishing a case, whatever the outcome, and closing out the paperwork. He loves understanding and organizing and keeping things afloat. 

In another universe Ianto feels like lead everytime he walks to the office. Sometimes he wonders why he still even bothers. 

* * *

In one universe Ianto Jones dies. He dies in the arms of a man that loved him fiercely that he begged those responsible to undo it. Begged them to take the world and its children instead. His pleas would fall on deaf ears. Ianto Jones and Jack Harkness would die. Jack would wake up,  on the floor of Thames House surrounded by bodies and Gwen Cooper’s tears, and Ianto Jones would not. 

In another universe Ianto Jones lives. For a certain definition of the word. Although it wouldn’t be hard to argue that what Ianto continued to do, was hardly living. 

* * *

In one universe Yvonne Hartman dies in the Battle of Canary Wharf. 

In another universe Yvonne crosses into the first universe to stay. 

“Ianto Jones thought highly of you,” Gwen Cooper tells her, full of a sad kind of reverence for his name. When she walked away Yvonne would simply mutter to herself “who the hell is Ianto Jones?”

When she’s questioned about that name again, this time by Captain Harkness who somehow sounds even sadder and more melancholy as he asks, a picture emerges finally. Ianto from admin. Sad. Made bad tea. She can’t imagine someone caring so much for him. So much that their poker face falters to reveal the sadness underneath.

* * *

In that same universe, the one Yvonne now found herself in, Jack Harkness finds a file. It’s labeled “Blind Summit”. It details a drug that increased intelligence and strength, and boosted healing. It doesn’t make people immortal. Not, exactly. But it does make them harder to kill than previously thought. Much harder, in fact, even when they should have been completely dead. A drug Ianto Jones had been injected with, and unaware of because the Yvonne native to their universe had retconned it away. 

In that universe, Jack Harkness would make a call. “I know you quit Gwen, but this isn’t Torchwood. This is personal...” 

And in that first universe, Ianto Jones would wake up surrounded by two people that loved him fiercely. His best friend and the man he loved more than anything. They’d be grinning from ear to ear, over ten years from the day he “died”. 

In another universe Ianto comes to an epiphany. He isn’t living. Not really. In another universe Ianto decides that maybe it’s time to go back to the valleys, the one place he felt happy as a child visiting his Nan, and maybe starting over. Maybe taking things in a new direction away from gray steel and cubicles that remind him he’s so very alone. And instead working in a small town where there’s community and people who might care about him from time to time. Maybe he’ll stop in Cardiff on the way to visit family. Maybe while there he’ll run into a dark haired, off duty police Sergeant, who’ll introduce herself as Gwen. Maybe she’ll offer to buy him a pint in exchange for some gossip. Maybe it’ll be the closest he’ll have felt to someone caring about what he has to say in a long while. Maybe he’ll even stay in touch with his new friend. Maybe while at the pub they’ll run into a drunk doctor that’s been running away from his loneliness for too long too, and went to Cardiff on holiday on whim. Maybe he’ll laugh at Ianto for willingly planning to move the countryside, but he’ll keep in touch with this Dr. Owen Harper too.   


In both universes Ianto Jones finally lives. 


End file.
